RESEARCH ON THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON GENERATION Y CONSUMER PURCHASE DECISIONS

Members from different generations create challenges for marketing specialists due to their unique behaviour specifics and in the context of constant technology development, these challenges become only harder. In the current marketing situation, there is a new challenge - outreach and interest for generation Y consumers. A question arises - which means to apply and which of them would be effective. It is a new field of research both for scientists and marketing practitioners. The article analyses the members of generation Y because in their case there are most prominent scientific discovery inquiries on their behaviour and marketing management decisions. By evaluating that, the aim of the article is to create a model of the influence of social media for generation Y consumer purchase decisions. The need to offer a new model has appeared due to the changes in the current world that are changing the habits and features of the society, constantly improving technologies are changing the lifestyle, values and needs of people. The marketing decisions that were applied before are not presenting the desired results in the current market. Previous research allows identifying the specifics of generation Y, however, due to constantly changing technology environment it is not clearly known how this generation makes the decisions to purchase something. When wishing to find the right way to sell products and services to this generation, it is necessary to understand it and to find ways to communicate with it. When creating social media content and creating added value to the customers, it is vital to understand the complexity of the external and internal factors that determine their choice to buy. To achieve the goal of this article, the theoretical part presents a complex analysis of factors that determine consumer behaviour in social media, applications of generation theory for making marketing decisions; characteristics of generation Y were identified. In this research, marketing factors that influence the consumer's decision to buy were analysed, their effects and application in the purchase process of generation Y consumers were evaluated.